Customizing Adobe CS4 Installation
I know it's late. The reason I hesitated to publish this post is that... I can't figure out a way to do the pre-serialization. CS4 won't respect an application.xml.override like CS3 did, unless you have a volume license (according to the official CS4 deployment manual). So this time I can only share with you the customization part.
Please be noticed, I myself am not 100% satisfied with what I've figured out, but the hacks have been working absolutely fine for over 2 months on my XP SP3 and Vista SP1. And as always, you do this at your own risk. Read on if we understand each other.
Photoshop CS4 (Extended)
- Navigate to
/Adobe CS4/payloads/. - Open
/AdobeBridge3All/AdobeBridge3All.proxy.xmlwith a text editor. - Search for
<Dependencies>. - Delete everything within
<Dependencies>, except two blocks withtype="critical", make it look exactly like screenshot #1. - Open
/AdobePhotoshop11-Core/AdobePhotoshop11-Core.proxy.xml, repeat step 3-4, make it look exactly like screenshot #2. - Save both files. Oh did I tell you to backup first?
- Run setup and wave goodbye to craps.
Illustrator CS4
If you already edited AdobeBridge3All.proxy.xml in a previous Photoshop installation and successfully got rid of Adobe Bridge, you won't need to touch the one in Illustrator. Otherwise, treat it the same way (step 1-4 of the Photoshop section above).
Then, yes, /AdobeIllustrator14mul/AdobeIllustrator14mul.proxy.xml, and here's screenshot #3 for your referrence.
Design Premium CS4
Files you need to edit are:
/AdobeBridge3All/AdobeBridge3All.proxy.xml/AdobeDreamweaver10-mul/AdobeDreamweaver10-mul.proxy.xml/AdobeFireworks10All/AdobeFireworks10All.proxy.xml/AdobeFlash10-mul/AdobeFlash10-mul.proxy.xml/AdobeIllustrator14mul/AdobeIllustrator14mul.proxy.xml/AdobeInDesign6AppBase-mul/AdobeInDesign6AppBase-mul.proxy.xml/AdobePhotoshop11-Core/AdobePhotoshop11-Core.proxy.xml/AdobeVersionCue4All/AdobeVersionCue4All.proxy.xml
Edit how? You've already learned that.
One tip is, if you kept, let's say "Adobe XMP Panels CS4" in one of the xml files, you can delete it when you see it else wheres.
I don't use anything other than Photoshop and Illustrator, so I'm unable to tell you which components are required by other products included in a Creative Suite. Sorry.
Miscellaneous
I'm not gonna guide you through Dreamweaver or Web Premium or anything else neither. Hopefully you can draw inferences about other cases from the above examples.
You're gonna have to trust Adobe this time, what's been tagged as "critical" in the xml files are indeed critical. Sky falls down if you remove them. Here are my understandings (some are just superficial) to several important components. They are required by the CS4 apps or recommended by me:
- Adobe Anchor Service CS4
The Lord that rules. - Adobe CSI CS4
The infrastructure that rules, too. I guess the VersionCue Client service which enables the "Open File" dialogs is also included in here. - Adobe Type Support CS4
Support for layers with texts/fonts. - Adobe XMP Panels CS4
Support for the "File Info" dialogs. - Adobe CMaps CS4 / Adobe ALM CS4
Required by Illustrator (?) - Adobe Color - Photoshop Specific CS4
- Adobe Color NA Recommended Settings CS4
- Adobe Color CommonSetRGB
- Adobe Color CommonSetCMYK
At last, my apologies again for I didn't have time and energy to present a more detailed and refined tutorial. Hope as many folks as possible can benefit from this post. Merry Christmas.
